A place called “Seh-Sheh-Ah”

Moving on!

So let’s see: after saying “hello” and introducing yourself, what should you do? Well, one option, as I mentioned before, is to run away as quickly as possible to save yourself from the embarrassment of having a conversation in a language that you’ve only started to learn :)

But there is another way!

First of all, you can tell your Russian friend that you came from a place called “Seh-Sheh-Ah”. This, as you might have already guessed, is a special Russian way of saying “United States of America”. So, remember this little “ya” thing from our previous lesson? Now’s the time to use it!

All you need to say is these three words “ya iz seh-sheh-ah”. At first glance, it seems ok. But if look closely, you might notice something strange. It’s only three words! And we had much more - “I”, “am”, “from”, “the” and “USA”. Well, first of all, they don’t have all those articles in the Russian language. Poor guys. They don’t know what they are missing :)

All right, we are still one word short. And now I’m going to reveal a secret. A secret so horrible and fearful that I will actually give you a moment to make sure that your children are not reading this :)

Are you ready? Brace yourself.

Here we go: Russian language doesn’t have a verb “to be”!!

Yeah, I know it’s scary. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and think about it. How can this be possible? But it’s true.

Well, actually, it’s only half-true. They have “to be”, but they are too lazy to use it :)

So you’re really saying “I from USA!”. Yeah, it sounds like some kind of Indian-talk: “Me heap want see play!”, “Me want play start heap soon”, “Me heap big fan Cicely Courtneidge” :)

And remember: this phrase will be useful only if you are in Russia. Don’t say it to your Russian friends in the USA, or you will sound silly (Imagine saying this to your close friend whom you’ve known for 10 years: “You know, John, I’m actually from the USA!” :).

That’s all for today! And in the next lesson I will teach you how to fake a conversation in Russian.